Have you ever been in a disaster? │ The Science of Disasters with Ilan Kelman

Have you ever been in a disaster? Or suffered in some way from one? And what ranks as a disaster? A hurricane? Flooding? An environmental event like an erupting volcano? Government policy you don't agree with? Or dropping a meal on the floor, just as guests arrive for dinner?

Stay with me, Ilan Kelman, for this new series ‘The Science of Disasters’. Subscribe now to get future episodes.

Have you ever experienced a disaster? This question might seem odd, but hopefully it will start you thinking carefully about some difficult situations which you have been through inadvertently or even of your own making. What about the nasty storm you were caught in? Or the way you sweltered during that heat wave?

Fewer people will have made it through a hurricane cyclone or volcanic eruption. Earthquakes are more frequently felt than cause damage. Some of you may even have been unlucky enough to have been caught in the midst of a terrorist attack or an epidemic like Ebola.

But what do we mean by disaster? If you made it out unscathed then perhaps it wasn't a disaster for you, but it could still have cost lives, caused damage and disrupted many others. So, is a disaster only one for those affected? Or is it a disaster for everyone connected to it? Even if just by being in the same country or watching it or reading through it on the news.

Think how often we use the words disaster, catastrophe, calamity. You might be cooking and drop your cake mix or soufflé just removed from the oven, smashing your favourite dish and requiring a full hour to clean up. Your immediate reaction might be “what a disaster!” or perhaps “could this day get any worse?”.

At other times you might be angry with the government, with a political ideology different to yours and so you describe the effect of their policies as a disaster but a disaster for whom? Pensioners, single parents, or the super-rich? It depends on your point of view.

Considering the wide variety of ways in which the term disaster is used and the wide variety of ways in which one could occur, it seems that perhaps everyone has experienced a disaster, catastrophe or a crisis, if not several, in some way or another. This is especially the case when thinking about the words broader scope. The world has been in a so-called financial crisis since about 2007 or 2008, although people debate and discuss what this means and who is really affected.

People who travel regularly have inevitably had their bus, train, airplane or boat delayed or cancelled, possibly even as part of a major disruption such as a thick fog or volcanic ash closing an airport. On the other hand, if cancelling the flights prevents airplanes from crashing, is a fog or volcanic ash really a disaster? Isn't it rather a simple and typical environmental event? After all, fog has blanketed the landscape and volcanoes have erupted for long before human beings had airplanes to be grounded. The concern is not so much what the environment is doing but that our system, in this case air transportation cannot function during certain environmental circumstances. We can take actions like closing the airport when there is fog or volcanic ash in order to prevent a disaster. It’s not necessarily a big concern, even if it is frustrating for people wanting to fly immediately, but better to be delayed than dead. So, as we can see ambiguity is a marriage when we try to define what constitutes a disaster. Ultimately, we see that within our general day-to-day thoughts, disasters and concepts of them are far more commonly part of our lives than we realise. Rather than one-off, strange, specific events, disasters instead form part of the long-term continuing situations we experience integrated into our daily routines. So how should we define a disaster? Is it a subjective or objective experience?

Join me next time to find out in this new series ‘The Science of Disasters’.

Subscribe now to watch all the episodes in the series, clicking on the bell button to hear about new downloads as they arrive.